Friday, April 17, 2009

juvenile garter snake



Laurel and I found this little guy down by our pond the other day. Apparently garters are the only snakes in our region with stripes running lengthwise down their bodies. We saved him in a bucket so Aurora could take a look when she got home. He was a surprisingly spirited little fellow, would puff himself full of air and even took a strike at me once. Not venomous, but a little aggressive nevertheless. We are glad to have him, though, as these little predators are so important to keeping the smaller critters in check.

I have been thinking a lot about purpose these days. The purpose of bees is to pollinate, the purpose of snakes is to weed out the weak frogs and dragonflies, etc . . . What is the purpose of humans?

2 comments:

  1. PURPOSE OF HUMANS:
    eat, sleep, reproduce, pretend that we have a great and noble purpose, eat sleep, reproduce, pretend that we have a great and noble purpose, eat , sleep, reproduce....

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  2. Our purpose is not necessarily a pretty one. Take a look at what mankind is doing to the planet. We dig up carbon long locked up by biological processes and we put it back where it came from - the air. At the same time, our other activities reduce the planet's biological capacity to absorb and lock up carbon. It's pretty simple. Our purpose is to undo what took nature millennia to do. We are here to cause mass extinction and convert the planet very quickly back to a tropical paradise like it was before we arrived. Circle of life. We are helping to make the planet what it was once before. A warm, tropical blank slate for life to flourish!

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